Dr. Anthony Fauci is probably one of the most accomplished physicians of this era.
Among many other achievements, he has been an advisor to seven presidents (describing himself as “nonpolitical”), was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2022, and was one of the first scientists/physicians on the front line during the AIDS crisis. Fauci has been named an honorary doctor at many academic institutions and even received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from then-President George W. Bush in 2008.
Fauci was at Chicago’s Athenaeum Center for Thought & Culture June 26 to promote his newest book, the memoir On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service, fielding questions from Sasha-Ann Simons, the host of the WBEZ show Reset. The book takes a personal look into Fauci’s rise to medical success, from his childhood in Brooklyn to tackling the AIDS epidemic to, most recently, navigating COVID-19.
At the event, Fauci displayed a wit that some may have missed in his television appearances. At one point, when Simons asked, “What took you so long to write a memoir?,” Fauci responded, “Well, I’ve been kind of busy”—one of several moments that drew applause from the large audience.
As for why he wrote On Call, Fauci said, in part, “I felt that, hopefully, it would be a source of inspiration … importantly, for younger people who are considering a career in public service; it’s a challenging but very rewarding field.”
The hour-long talk delved into many aspects of Fauci’s life as detailed in his book—going all the way back to his childhood. At one point, the 83-year-old Fauci commented about remembering his mother pushing him in a stroller, prompting Simons to comment, “You probably have the sharpest memory of anyone I’ve ever met.”
Fauci also spoke about the political divisiveness that has enveloped this country and that has resulted in him and his family receiving death threats, with two people being arrested in connection with those. (Fauci has said that he sees a connection between the rise in death threats made against him and his family and public figures connecting him to COVID-19 conspiracy theories.) “Differences in political ideologies [can be] healthy because there’s a difference of opinion,” Fauci said. “As long as it’s done in a civil way, that’s the beauty of our country. What’s so disturbing is a profound degree of divisiveness where differences are looked upon as ‘I hate you for your difference.’ Then hate turns to vitriol and then you have threats against public officials.”
Fauci also clarified a couple misconceptions about himself, saying, “Because of the difficulties that happened during the Trump administration, people incorrectly assumed that I’m of a political persuasion, and I’m not. I had a relationship with George H.W. Bush that was as warm as the one I had with Barack Obama.” He also stressed that he doesn’t make policy changes, stating that people thought he made the six-foot-distance rule during the COVID pandemic: “That’s a CDC rule. That’s not an Anthony Fauci rule.”
And regarding COVID, it was pointed out that the origin of the disease is still unknown, although a vaccine was developed in less than a year—and that there still isn’t one for HIV after four decades. (Fauci’s 2021 interview with Windy City Times about HIV/AIDS is at this link.) Fauci said the rapid COVID vaccine development “benefitted from the research done in another area. … We did a phase one, phase two and phase three and the federal government—to the credit of the Trump administration—invested billions of dollars to essentially pre-purchase the vaccine before you knew it even worked. … The trials took 11 months; normally, they’d take seven years.” He added that the efficacy of the COVID vaccine “was 93-94%,” adding that he broke into tears when he was informed of the news. “But what people didn’t appreciate is that influenza vaccines, in a good year, [are] maybe 50% effective; in a bad year, it could be as low as 10 to 20%.” Fauci also said that something people don’t realize is that vaccinations “saved 3 million lives, 18 million hospitalizations and $5.1 trillion” in this country.
But regarding Trump, Fauci commented that it was “painful” to have to correct the former president when it came to COVID (including Trump’s assertions about the drug hydroxychloroquine), also saying that it was Trump’s team that was infuriated with him before the former president was. (He said this after referring to former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Daniel Moynihan in saying, “You’re entitled to your own set of opinions, but you’re not entitled to your own set of data.”) When asked if he thinks Trump respects him, Fauci replied, “It’s not important.”
A significant part of On Call is about Fauci being on the forefront of HIV/AIDS-related research. “About 40% of the book is about my experience with HIV,” Fauci stated. “I’m a physician and scientist, and my area of expertise is HIV and infectious diseases. I was one of the first people to treat what was then an unusual disease. My career turned around with HIV; I was doing really well for seven, eight, nine years developing therapies. The first cases of what turned out to be HIV were in a report from the CDC—all previously young, gay, healthy men had this strange disease. So I decided that I was going to turn my career around and figure out what this disease was and how I could help these mostly gay men who were suffering and dying.” Such suffering deeply affected Fauci, who referred to his years researching HIV/AIDS as the “dark years of my professional career,” he said.
However, the talk also covered something not in On Call: Fauci’s recent Congressional hearing that included some combative moments with U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia). (Greene has called for Fauci to be prosecuted for “crimes against humanity” and refused to call the former NIAID director “doctor.”) When Simons characterized the hearing as “heated,” Fauci, “It got heated on the other side; I stayed cool. … In my mind, there was no value to that [hearing] when it could have been something that was helpful for the next time.” When asked if he lived in fear because of the constant death threats, Fauci quipped, “I’m certainly not afraid of Marjorie Taylor Greene.”
There were also questions from the audience sprinkled throughout the talk. One person asked Fauci that given all he knows and has done, “How do you handle such disrespect?” Fauci responded, “Well, you don’t get involved in it. When Marjorie Taylor Greene was attacking me, I didn’t want to lower myself to answering that. When people do that, it just reinforces me to do my job. … When you’re a public-health official, your patient is the United States of America, and your obligation is to focus everything you do on preserving and protecting the health of the people of the United States. When people attack you like that, it’s noise.”
Another audience inquiry asked Fauci what he thought was his biggest mistake in combating widespread disinformation at that time as well as his thoughts on rebuilding trust with institutions such as the CDC. “I will be the first to admit that we could’ve done things better,” Fauci said. “We made decisions that were not perfect. You can call them mistakes but we acted on the best information that we had. But if you’re asking me to look back, I’m not sure how to answer you because misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories were exploding during the time of COVID.”
WBEZ as well as Bookends and Beginnings presented the event.
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